Popularity of Sports

The world’s most watched sport is Formula 1 Racing.  The numbers of viewers and hours of footage is staggering.  597 million people watched Formula 1 last year.  A total of 11,183 hours was broadcast in 188 countries with 47% of it live coverage.  These numbers dwarf American sports.  As a longtime Formula 1 fan, I completely understand these facts.  I find the sport and it’s drivers fascinating.  Having competed for several years in the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) and teaching Road Racing, I understand just how difficult it is to push a car to the absolute limit consistently.  Racing is a popular sport.

I remember ESPN the Magazine had a list a while back of the highest paid athletes in the world, and Michael Schumacher (the 7 time Formula 1 Champion) was #1.  There was a small editors comment below his name saying, “We don’t know who he is either.”  It showed just how out of touch many American sports fans are with the rest of the world.  Schumacher is one of the greatest sportsmen ever, and his career earnings are close to the $1 Billion mark.  American’s think that Football, Basketball and Baseball are big sports, and they are in the USA.  They are not big on a global scale.  Just look at the numbers for Formula 1.

Italy- Last year, on a grand prix weekend nearly 70% of all people watching TV were tuned into F1.  70%!!!  That’s 32 million viewers of F1 in Italy.

Germany- 66% of the televisions or 40 million viewers were tuned to F1.

Poland- 65% of the televisions or 23 million viewers were tuned to F1.

Brazil and Spain are hardcore F1 fans with 69% (118 million), and 76%  (32 million) respectively.  The UK was at 48% (27 million viewers), France at 53% (29.3 million viewers), Japan at 30% (37 million viewers), Russian at 14% (18 million viewers), China at 9% (103 million viewers!), and the USA was only 3.5% (10 million viewers). 

In the USA, Nascar is the most watched sport, followed by Professional Football, Major League Baseball, then College Football followed by the NBA.  Nascar gets about 4.2% of American households to watch each race.  That’s down 21% from 2005 where Nascar averaged a 5.3% share.  Considering the total television population of the USA is only 283 million homes, that’s miniscule viewership compared to international sports like Formula 1, Soccer and Cricket. 

Now you can see why Formula 1 teams spend $400-$600 million PER YEAR, per team.  That’s 40 times the money of the best funded Indy Racing teams.  Engineering of the cars, technological advancements, driver salaries, and performance are at a different level in F1.  It really is the pinnacle of Motorsport, and (arguably) All Sport. 

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